Stephen Hrncir

English I and Pre-AP English I

Rm. 420 - Ext. 7420

shrncir@calallen.org

H - R - N - C - I - R

No, you don't have to ask. That's spelled correctly. It's Czech. It's pronounced HERN (rhymes with fern)- SIR (like "yes, sir").

But I'm not from Czechoslovakia. I was born and raised in south Texas.

I have an amazing wife, Katie (who teaches 2nd grade at Calallen East Elementary), and two awesome sons, Matthew and Grayson.

LIKES:

Playing with my sons
Calallen Football
Dallas Cowboys
Shakespeare
Poe
Tolkien
Neil Gaiman
Movies
Xbox
Classic Rock
Kolaches

DISLIKES:

Excuses

I began teaching at Trinity High School in Trinity, Texas. I taught junior English and coached football, basketball, and baseball. Our baseball team advanced to the state tournament where we lost 2-1 to the eventual champion, Rogers.

I moved on to Bonham High School in Bonham, Texas. I also taught juniors in Bonham, and I coached football and track and field. After a year of diligent work, I was promoted to offensive coordinator.

Next, my alma mater called me one day in the summer and asked if I was interested in filling their vacant offensive coordinator position. I decided to take the job. In my time there, I taught junior, senior, and freshmen English. I spent four great years working in Beeville, and I was honored to be chosen as the 2011-2012 A.C. Jones High School Professional Employee of the Year.  

I currently teach English 3 AP and English I Pre-AP at Calallen High School where I coach football (offensive line) as well. I also coach the boy and girl pole vaulters on our track team.

I graduated from A.C. Jones High School in Beeville, Texas in 1999. I was awarded an academic scholarship to Southern Arkansas University in Magnolia, Arkansas, where I also played guard on the football team for two years. After deciding not to continue playing, I became an assistant with the team until I received a bachelor's degree in English education in 2004. My senior thesis on Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado" was awarded honors recognition, which had never before happened in the history of the university, a fact of which I'm immensely proud.

In order to raise money to earn my master's degree, I worked as a correctional officer at the McConnell Correctional Facility in Beeville in 2004. I consider this a valuable part of my education. In a nutshell, convincing a child to write an expository essay seems like a walk in the park after daily having to deal with large groups of angry men who wanted nothing more than to shank me with a sharpened plastic spoon.

In 2006, I received a master's degree from Southern Arkansas in kinesiology. A study in which I co-authored was published in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research in 2007. If you're interested, it can be found here:

Core stabilization exercises enhance lactate clearance following high-intensity exercise

I have a reputation for being a "hard" teacher, but that's because I hold myself and my students to a very high standard. As much as they need to learn English, they're also learning accountability and responsibility.  In the end, students always return to me and tell me, in hindsight of course, that they really appreciated the level of rigor in my class because it pushed them to grow as a student. What higher compliment can a teacher strive to earn?